Page 25 of Cry of Blood and Joy
I avoided Steve’s gaze, turning my head toward the grimy window as guilt and discomfort warred in my chest. My hands trembled slightly as I wrapped my arms around myself, seeking comfort in the familiar gesture. It still unnerved me that he was a vampire now, a child of the night like Enzo. The rational part of my mind understood it, accepted it even, but seeing those red eyes where blue ones should be made my heart race with instinctive fear.
But then a wave of gratitude crashed over me, reminding me that if Enzo hadn’t turned Steve, my brother would be dead. Cold, lifeless, gone forever instead of just... changed. The internal conflict made my throat tighten with unshed tears.
“There are winos in the alleys around here,” Rocco offered with casual callousness that made my blood run cold. “They won’t be missed.”
I rubbed my arms at his indifference. He acted as if he were discussing the weather rather than suggesting my brother hunt human beings like prey.
The words hung in the stale air of the room like a poison cloud, and my shadows stirred restlessly in response to my horror. The casual way he dismissed human life—even the lives of people society had forgotten—sent ice through my veins. This was the world Steve had been pulled into, where human lives were measured by their worth to others, where the desperate and forgotten became acceptable casualties.
The world I had been pulled into. A world with Enzo. A world I knew belonged with Enzo.
“Don’t be seen,” Enzo said. The enforcer in him was showing, the man who’d spent decades ensuring his orders were followed without question. “If you’re caught...”
I tensed, every muscle in my body stiffened as horrifying images flooded my mind. My brother in Angelo’s hands—Steve strapped to some medieval torture device, his newly turned vampire strength useless against silver chains and centuries of experience in extracting information. My shadows pooled and spread like spilled ink, responding to the terror that crystallized in my chest.
Angelo hadn’t liked it when Enzo had turned Steve without permission, had seen it as a betrayal of protocol and hierarchy. I wasn’t sure why—maybe vampires in the Santi family had to ask permission first. The memory of Angelo’s cold fury still made my hands shake. He wouldn’t think twice about killing my brother if Steve didn’t tell him exactly what he wanted to hear—and maybe even if he did.
“I’ll take the secret of where you’re at to the grave,” Steve said, meeting Enzo’s gaze with a steadiness that made my chest swell with fierce pride. “I’m not a snitch.” I could see the determination carved into every line of his face, the way his jaw set with stubborn loyalty.
“Angelo can be very, very persuasive,” Enzo replied, his tone flat and emotionless in a way that made my skin crawl. I’d heard that voice before—the voice of someone who’d witnessed Angelo’s methods firsthand, who knew exactly what “persuasive” meant in the vampire world.
“Understood,” Steve said simply, but he swallowed hard against what that understanding meant.
Steve glanced between Enzo and me, his red-tinged eyes lingering on my face with an expression that was trying hard to be reassuring but only managed to make my chest tighten withfresh anxiety. “I’ll be back soon. I don’t want to be lingering outside any longer than I have to.”
Panic clawed at my throat as the reality of what he was about to do hit me full force. So many things could go wrong once he stepped out that door. I hurried over to him, my feet moving before my brain could catch up, and threw my arms around his familiar frame. The embrace felt desperate, like I was trying to hold onto him before the night could steal him away. “Be careful,” I whispered against his shoulder, breathing in his scent that still carried traces of the human brother I’d grown up with beneath the new metallic edge of his vampire nature.
“I will.” My brother ruffled my hair like he used to do when we were kids. He pulled back gently and kissed me on the cheek with the same tenderness he’d shown when I was little and afraid of thunderstorms. The gesture was so achingly familiar that it made my eyes burn with unshed tears. “Don’t worry.”
Not worry? Was he kidding? My shadows writhed restlessly around my feet like anxious pets, responding to the storm of fear and helplessness brewing in my chest. How could I not worry when he was walking into the night as a predator, when every instinct I had was screaming that something terrible was going to happen?
He opened the door with practiced stealth and disappeared into the darkness just as quietly as Enzo had, leaving behind only the lingering scent of his cologne and the crushing weight of my terror. The soft click of the door closing sounded unnaturally loud in the sudden silence, final as a coffin lid.
Rocco got up from the sagging bed with a grunt, the ancient springs creaking in protest as he moved toward a chipped counter where a bottle of red wine sat like a beacon of hope in the dingy room. He held up a cracked plastic cup, the kind they probably gave to patients in hospitals. “Wine?”
“I’m fine,” Enzo opened the curtain and peered out. I could see the way his jaw was clenched, the rigid set of his shoulders as he positioned himself near the window to keep watch.
Rocco poured himself a generous measure of the dark liquid, the wine making soft glugging sounds as it filled the cup. “What do you plan to do now?”
Enzo glanced over his shoulder. “Dimitri said Keir turned on us. I want to find out what game he’s playing.”
I knew I shouldn’t—alcohol and unstable shadow powers probably weren’t the smartest combination. But after hearing Rocco talk so casually about human lives, after watching Steve leave to hunt, I needed something to numb the growing darkness of what this world really was. The wine might be a terrible idea, but everything else felt worse.
Or maybe down the whole bottle.
Chapter Eighteen
Enzo
Joy took a plastic cup from Rocco, and I watched her hand tremble as she accepted it, the slight tremor sending ripples through the dark wine like tiny earthquakes. She was trying so hard not to fall apart, putting on a brave face that might have fooled anyone else, but I could read every line of tension in her body. Her shadows were moving around her in restless spirals, responding to her emotional turmoil like smoke caught in an invisible wind.
The wine seemed to help marginally—her shoulders relaxed by degrees as the alcohol hit her system, though her shadows continued their agitated dance across the dingy carpet. She drained the cup faster than she should have, her throat working as she swallowed the bitter liquid like medicine.
Rocco shook his head slowly, a bemused frown creasing his flour-dusted features as he stared down at his own wine as if it had personally betrayed him. “I thought this was cheap wine, but it must be more potent than I thought.” The uncertainty rolled off him in waves.
The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up as I tried to identify what had caught his attention. “Why?”
“For a minute there, I thought I saw shadows moving around here.” He gestured vaguely with his cup, wine sloshing dangerously close to the rim. “Like they were alive or something. Must be the stress getting to me.”
